Between the Thanksgiving and Christmas periods, The Piano from Miramax opened in a limited run on December 6 across 21 screens in major North American cities including Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.
After its release, this film which had won the Golden Lion at the September Venice Film Festival received unanimous high praise from the media. Its composite score reached a stellar 9.2 points, becoming another standout high-scoring work in the year-end period right behind Toy Story.
Renowned American film critic Roger Ebert did not hold back, calling the movie "one of the most extraordinary and unforgettable films I have ever seen."
In its first week of limited release, The Piano earned 1.55 million dollars over seven days, averaging 73,000 dollars per screen.
The other awards-contending film opening alongside it, Grand Canyon from Fox, was directed by the well-known Hollywood screenwriter and director Lawrence Kasdan. It told the story of a Black man accidentally entering a white community and the resulting racial conflict.
Grand Canyon had an even smaller limited release on just two screens, purely to qualify for awards season nominations. In its opening week it earned 190,000 dollars from those two screens.
However, as an awards contender, Grand Canyon's critical reception was only average, with a composite score of just 7.6 points. Compared to The Piano's 9.2, it clearly had little chance of making waves in awards season.
December 13, Friday.
Although theoretically this week was still the gap between the two major periods, if judged by the scale of releasing films, the Christmas period had essentially begun early.
Because this week saw the release of Steven Spielberg's Hook, along with Paramount Pictures' JFK.
Columbia Pictures had placed great expectations on Hook. The film's final production budget reached 70 million dollars, opening on 2,197 screens.
However, upon release, Hook's word of mouth collapsed instantly. Its media score plummeted all the way to 2.8 points.
Variety criticized Hook as "messy and unrestrained." Newsweek was even harsher, commenting that watching Hook felt like "watching an 80,000-pound midget dance."
Over its three-day opening weekend, Hook earned only 13.52 million dollars, far below Columbia Pictures' expectations.
In the original timeline, Hook had eventually broken 100 million dollars in North America. Relying on over 200 million dollars globally plus subsequent revenue, the film had barely allowed Columbia to recoup its costs.
This time, however, this poorly reviewed "blockbuster" would not enjoy such luck again.
Because the following week, the highly anticipated new DC Cinematic Universe film The Flash was about to release.
In the original timeline, JFK which opened alongside Hook should have been produced by Warner. However, since Warner's focus for this year's end-of-year period was largely on The Flash, they had abandoned the project at the time.
Compared to Hook, JFK fared much better. This somewhat unconventional historical drama received an excellent 8.3-point media score after opening.
However, on the box office side, JFK opened on 1,164 screens and ultimately earned 5.22 million dollars over its three-day opening weekend. That part was rather underwhelming.
It should be noted that thanks to the success of Oliver Stone's previous films and Kevin Costner's involvement in this one, JFK's production budget had reached 40 million dollars. Although not at Hook's level, 40 million dollars in this era was absolutely a big-budget production.
With 5.22 million dollars over the three-day opening weekend, compared to the 40 million dollar production budget and roughly 20 million in marketing costs, if the film could not deliver a strong long-tail run afterward, someone at Paramount might be getting fired again.
In the original timeline, JFK's box office had been very solid and it had become one of the big winners at the 1992 Oscars.
This time, however, no one dared to be certain.
All because of The Flash, set to release on December 20.
With such a highly anticipated heavyweight blockbuster looming ahead, the other films in the same period simply carried a tragic sense of inevitability.
The first two entries in the DC Cinematic Universe had performed overwhelmingly well.
Moreover, according to internal Warner Bros. information, The Flash's finished product was stunning.
After two months of intensive carpet-style promotion, The Flash's Los Angeles premiere was held on December 18.
Confident in the film, Warner had elevated this premiere to the same scale as the summer's Batman: The Dark Knight, once again choosing the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, which could accommodate two thousand people.
Dume Point Manor.
Around five in the afternoon, Janet finally finished her makeup, lifted her skirt hem, and walked downstairs accompanied by the AB girls.
Simon, waiting in the living room downstairs, turned his head from the sofa. The woman was wearing a wine-red silk gown she had always loved, paired with black low heels. Her loose golden hair cascaded down, and the skin on her exposed shoulders looked even fairer and more radiant from the pampered care during pregnancy, making one irresistibly want to take a bite.
Floating gracefully to Simon's side, Janet bent down beside the sofa with a smile and said.
"Little bastard, want a bite?"
The tone was just like back then.
Simon smiled, looked up and kissed the approaching Janet, then said. "Let's go."
"Mm, let me say goodbye to Melbourne first."
Janet walked over to the baby crib near the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room. D-girl Deborah was watching the little guy who was fast asleep inside.
Compared to the inevitably ugly appearance right after birth, after two weeks the little one had already regained the delicate look a baby should have. Traces of both Simon and Janet could be seen in his features.
After gazing at the child together for a moment and giving a few instructions to the ABD girls, Simon and Janet finally got in the car and headed downtown.
Evening traffic in Los Angeles was somewhat congested. It was not until 5:40 that the two arrived outside the Shrine Auditorium in the city center.
The premiere was scheduled to start at six, with the red carpet hour beforehand. Although it did not have the scale of the Oscars red carpet, the lively scene here was no less exciting than an Oscar ceremony.
The moment Simon and Janet stepped out of the car at the red carpet entrance, surprised cheers erupted around them.
Not wanting to steal the spotlight from tonight's main attraction, Simon kept a smile on his face, nodded slightly to the media and fans on both sides, and led Janet straight into the auditorium without pausing.
After posing for photos at the wall, Warner Bros. CEO Terry Semel had already come over to greet them.
Everyone chatted as they entered the backstage area of the auditorium, which was currently glittering with stars.
Clint Eastwood, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, and many other superstars had specially come to show support.
Of course, the Batman series' Adam Baldwin, Valerie Golino, Tommy Lee Jones, Anthony Hopkins, and the rest of the main cast were naturally present. The Wonder Woman team's Famke Janssen, Linda Hamilton, and Joanna Cassidy had all shown up as well.
By comparison, The Flash's director George Cosmatos, male lead Jason Gedrick, and female lead Robin Wright seemed somewhat inconspicuous among the big names.
Of course, considering the popularity Adam Baldwin and Valerie Golino had gained from the Batman series, the main cast's "inconspicuousness" would be completely overturned in the coming weeks.
After a brief round of greetings and small talk, as six o'clock approached everyone began filing into the main auditorium hall.
Once everyone was seated and the host gave a short speech, the screening officially began.
The first The Flash film mainly told the origin story of this superhero.
Simon had always disliked the cliché narrative starting from childhood. That was why the earlier Batman had jumped straight into Bruce Wayne becoming a superhero to start the story, and the results had proven extremely successful.
The currently post-producing Wonder Woman similarly had no plans to touch Diana Prince's childhood.
However, this The Flash still had to follow a somewhat "standard" approach.
Similar to Bruce Wayne's parents being killed in an alley, the childhood shadow of Barry Allen witnessing his mother's murder was a topic this superhero simply could not avoid.
Still, out of instinctive resistance to childhood narration, Simon had turned Barry Allen's early experiences into an opening plot hook.
By the time the main film began, Barry Allen was already an adult.
The story retained most of the comic's basic settings. The adult Barry Allen was a forensic technician at the Central City Police Department.
Of course, necessary changes for the movie version were essential.
The general plot of this origin story followed forensic technician Barry Allen cooperating with Professor Albert Swan. During the collaboration he unexpectedly encountered a lab accident and gained super speed powers.
However, Professor Swan was left paralyzed by the accident.
Barry Allen confided his newly gained powers to Professor Swan, trying to uncover the reason, while also having to deal with the "Weather Wizard," who had likewise obtained superpowers from the same accident.
As the plot progressed, Allen successfully defeated and captured the Weather Wizard, only to unexpectedly discover that he had unknowingly fallen into another conspiracy.
It turned out that the seemingly paralyzed Professor Swan had actually also gained super speed.
Only, the accusations and difficulties everyone had leveled at Swan after the lab accident had given this superpowered individual antisocial tendencies.
In summary, this origin story had three intertwined threads.
The first was Barry Allen's background and childhood, including the unsolved case of his mother's murder and his father still in prison. This portion formed most of the film's everyday narrative.
The second was Barry Allen awakening his superhero attributes as The Flash, achieved through his confrontation with the Weather Wizard.
The third was Barry Allen's showdown with his destined archenemy, the Reverse-Flash Professor Albert Swan.
The first and third storylines were actually tightly connected. Professor Swan was precisely the "killer" who had murdered Barry Allen's mother. This Reverse-Flash had accidentally traveled back to the past during a battle with Allen, thus creating Allen's childhood tragedy.
For the audience inside the Shrine Auditorium, the three interwoven storylines were not complicated at all and remained clear and straightforward.
However, most people's attention was captured by the film's special effects.
The 1978 Superman series' "special effect" of Clark Kent flying around the Earth to reverse time had been crudely unbearable.
Yet in this The Flash, with support from Daenerys Effects Company, the film not only perfectly displayed Barry Allen's high-speed movement scenes but even created slow-motion shots similar to Quicksilver in the X-Men series from the original timeline.
The specific quality naturally could not reach levels from twenty years later. However, to audiences of this era, the stunning impact was no less than the visual shock the previous two Batman films had delivered.
When the final battle on the big screen ended and the credits rolled, the more than a thousand people inside the Shrine Auditorium suddenly realized that two hours of screening had just flown by like that.
Simon had always felt that the most important criterion for judging a film's quality was whether the audience noticed time passing during the viewing.
If a movie let audiences watch from beginning to end without realizing it, even forgetting the soda and popcorn in their hands, then the project would be hard to fail.
Conversely, if a film constantly pulled audiences out of the story, made all kinds of other thoughts pop into their heads, or even made them consider giving up watching, then its box office prospects were obvious.
This The Flash might not reach the heights of the two Batman films, but in terms of plot it absolutely surpassed them in smooth, seamless flow. Coupled with The Flash IP's popularity which was not much lower than Superman or Batman, plus the film's outstanding high-speed special effects, failure was basically impossible.
The only question was what height the film's box office would ultimately reach.
As the credits continued to the end, the customary post-credits scene appeared.
This time the cameo featured Valerie Golino as Catwoman.
The morally ambiguous female superhero appeared on the big screen looking travel-worn, as if she had just been in a fight. Her Catwoman suit even showed signs of damage.
Under Barry Allen's surprised and puzzled gaze, Catwoman did not waste words and said bluntly. "Hey, speedster, I know you're special. So right now some guys need your help."
With those words, the big screen went completely dark.
For comic fans, this simple interaction alone was enough to get them excited.
Of course Catwoman and The Flash had crossed paths in the comics, but on the big screen Valerie Golino's Catwoman had already become DC's leading goddess. This female superhero's encounter with Barry Allen, plus thoughts of the story developments to follow, was simply too thrilling.
Some core comic fans were already piecing together other information revealed in that short post-credits scene.
Why had Catwoman come to Central City?
What kind of battle had she been through?
How would Barry Allen respond to Catwoman's appearance?
And so on.
Moreover, even people who were not very familiar with the original comic plot, after watching the first two Batman films, could not help but feel full of anticipation for the DC superheroes teaming up.